Wednesday, December 3, 2008

Let the games begin!

After a relatively productive day - lunch at the Victor with some visiting friends from Paris; hair salon; quick meeting at the beach outside the Shore Club - last night was a whirlwind, as expected.

First I went to Art Miami to see the curated Video Art Lounge because one of the curators is my friend. Then onto the Design Miami vernissage which was loads of fun to see everyone, say hi, sip champagne and watch your name being written on the floor of the Audi showroom by an artist.

Perrotin's party made my night though as every few minutes there was something else amusing happening: a marching band and cheerleaders from a local highschool performed; Pharrell showed up; Murakami came dressed as a flowerball; Gabriel, the artist from Berlin who created the playful sculptures on the second floor of the gallery whirled me around on the dance floor till I was ready to throw up, then whirled me around in the opposite direction to stabilize me.

Finally I met my friend Louisa at the Mondrian for the David Lachapelle's party. It's so humbling to come to Miami where no one knows you and have to wait at the door of a lowly hotel bar until someone finally recognizes you and whisks you into the party; and even this after kiss-kissing David at the door as he went outside for a brief air break!

Today Scope where I saw a range of wonderful work but Jonathan Levine's Gallery with wall to wall Shephard Fairey took the prize for most compelling. Worthy of note was galerie heliumcowboy artspace featuring Nina Braun's hand-knitted and sewn art works which are super labor intensive (0ne piece took 600 hours!), videos by Marck at Licht Feld (all of them beautiful and reasonably priced), paintings at Priska Juschka Fine Art by Nicky Nodjoumi, Ryan Schneider and Dana Melamed, and a Tibetan artist (I forget his name) at Tibetan Bridge Foundation's booth in Art Asia.

Most of the offerings at the Art Basel preview were good but nothing was as exciting as the stuff offered at Deitch Gallery. Deitch always manages to keep the essence of the art work alive, even in a sterile environment like an art fair. Recent works by old guards like Francesco Clemente and Julian Schnabel along with a 2008 diptych by the popular Russian duo Dubossarsky and Vinogradev just screamed to be taken off the walls and taken home with someone with a discerning eye and deep pockets.

Other things that interested me were gallery Continua's Loris Ceccini's "Gaps" (delicious!), Helly Nahmad's full on Dubuffet booth, Jablonka Galerie's treasure trove of super desirable Philip Taafes and of course Gagosian's playful Murakami painting. And the women: Yayoi Kusama; Cindy Shermans; Robert Miller Gallery's full offering of early Lee Krasner's, Louise Bourgeois.Tonight I think I'm going to indulge in everything Russian with a show of Russian curator Olga Sviblova at the Bass Museum, but who knows where I'll end up.